Bitten
by TheVelvetDusk
Summary: Some fevers are intermittent, coming and going without much fanfare. Others are viral, stemming from an infection that must be fought off. And some fevers start with a bite; a small, seemingly harmless, almost imperceptible - but ultimately irreparable - bite. { TFP. set post-s1. holds pretty much zero affiliation to the actual premise of season 2. lyatt two-parter. }
1. Chapter 1

**_Prompt: For whatever reason, characters are trapped together in the midst of a quarantine._**

 _Ok so a few things for this a/n:_

 _This prompt is courtesy of the lovely people at Timeless Fanfic Prompts on Tumblr WHO RAN A SUPER AWESOME CONTEST THAT I WON :) Just needed to take a moment to say thank you so much to their team for maintaining those incredible monthly challenges. You guys are so generous! And besides the super sweet prizes, those prompts kept me going when I was fresh out of my own good fic ideas, so that's also mega cool. THANKS AGAIN. (And the contest may be over, but they're still cranking out weekly writing prompts, so check it out if you need inspiration)_

 _Also... I hit a major wall while I was writing this fic, but I think it came together eventually..? Confession: It is a serious battle for me to concentrate right now because I don't want to write about season 2 anymore...I JUST WANT TO WATCH IT FOR REAL INSTEAD._

 _And on that note, this fic is already made obsolete by those bangin' promos, so don't expect this to follow anything that has been teased in the commercials. This is still completely my own stuff with the exception of one little thing that I borrowed from the info that's been released regarding the premiere. The fic takes place at some random point once the team is a few jumps in after what would be 2x01._

 _OKAY, enough rambling. On to the story!_

* * *

It took everything Lucy had to keep her breathing even when the Lifeboat's hatch opened and her world narrowed to four very close - too close, _way too close_ \- plexiglass walls. This was supposed to be the moment she could finally relax, a reprieve from the hellish realities of whichever historical disaster they'd just escaped from, a safe haven after the inside-out nausea of time travel, and most importantly, a wide open space to quickly remedy the persistent terror of her claustrophobia.

But she'd prepared herself for this. She'd known the severity of the situation from the very beginning. This was temporary. She could handle it. Her hands were shaking and her lungs felt paper-thin, but _goddammit_ , she could handle it.

"Lucy…"

Wyatt's hand rose and fell in an empty gesture. The hoarse sympathy in his voice rang out like a clanging cymbal, breaking over her with a nearly audible crash.

"It's okay," she said without any real conviction. "I'll be fine."

She met his wary look for a split-second, but that was all it took to read the overwhelming fusion of doubt and concern in his blue gaze. Lucy shook herself free from him for what felt like the millionth time, a renewed burst of resolve spiking through her. She couldn't afford to use him as a crutch now. There was no way she could cave so soon after the day they'd just had.

Their sad little cage really wasn't so bad once she'd work past her first ripple of panic. The walls were transparent, so she could almost convince herself that they weren't there at all. Agent Christopher had done her best to make the overgrown fish tank as comfortable as it could be, supplying them with three matching sets of cots, pillows, and blankets. Their cell phones were there too, along with a set of casual clothing for each of them, a curtained changing area, and enough food and water to tie them over until reinforcements could be brought in to assess the situation.

Once she'd settled into her cot with a bag of almonds and a soft pair of sweats, Lucy was amazed to find that she was going to be just fine. Her breathing was steady, heart composed, hands calm. It was more than a mantra, it was the truth - she really _was_ handling it. Her first instinct was to turn to Wyatt and share the good news, but...no, no she wasn't going to tell him, because…

Because she'd created an irrevocable rift between them today, and she couldn't go back on that decision now. He wasn't going to be the first person she went to with the good or the bad, not anymore. Not even if she couldn't quit watching his tension-filled back muscles shifting from beneath his t-shirt as he paced back and forth like a caged tiger in front of his cot.

She tore her eyes away from Wyatt just as his head tilted sideways to flick a restless glance in her direction. She shoved a big handful of almonds into her mouth and chewed mechanically, tasting nothing but a bitter, aching sadness. The alternative view offered no improvement. Rufus was sitting on the floor with his face no more than an inch from the glass barrier, his phone pressed to his ear and his eyes trained on Jiya as they spoke to each other on either side of the makeshift wall. She was clutching her phone with a watery smile, clearly doing her best to remain upbeat in spite of the circumstances. It was unbelievably cute, so damn cute that it made Lucy want to cry.

"They look like they're discussing dates and times for the next conjugal visit."

Wyatt's sarcastic remark bounced over her from far closer than he'd been before, and as much as she'd hoped to mask her surprised recoil, Lucy knew better than to assume that she could ever evade his obnoxiously thorough observation.

"I think it's sweet," she answered without looking up at him.

"Sure," he snorted in return, tossing another snide comment over his shoulder as he crossed back to his side of their collective holding cell, "and I think we're all going to be stir crazy within the hour."

Lucy clamped her teeth together and slid down into her sleeping bag, keeping her eyes trained on the ceiling. Let him be surly and pessimistic. She was exhausted in every sense of the word, so surely sleep couldn't be too far off for her…and it would be pretty impossible to go stir crazy if she was knocked out by a numbing wave of fatigue, right?

So she curled up beneath her blanket, released a deep sigh, and waited for sleep to come along and erase the stinging edge of pain in her heart, if only for a few meager hours of pardon...a few hours where she didn't have to actively block out thoughts of Wyatt.

Yes, just a short window of time where Wyatt Logan didn't exist; for the sake of her sanity, she needed to be free of Wyatt, free of mosquitos, free of fever.

Oh, God...please let them all be free of fever.

* * *

 _8 Hours Earlier_

* * *

1793\. It just had to be the summer of _1793_ in freaking Philadelphia.

If there had ever been a question of whether or not Emma was operating with any soundness of mind - which there wasn't, of course - then that question would have been officially tossed out the window with this one. It had been easy to see that Rittenhouse was desperate, frantic even, to recover lost ground ever since Ethan Cahill blew their organization wide open, but this...this was potentially suicidal.

Lucy felt Wyatt's eyes drilling into her long before she made it over to the platform, so it was no surprise when he stepped into her path before she could climb up into the Lifeboat. His face was all business as he approached, shoulders strained and voice low.

"Anything you'd like to tell me before we leave?"

"Yeah," she breathed back with a shaky smile. "Straighten your collar and comb your hair back. Sloppiness isn't cool in the 18th century."

Wyatt's expression remained unchanged. "Very funny. Let's try this again - is there anything you'd like to tell me _specifically_ in reference to that discreet side-meeting you just had with Agent Christopher? I don't like flying blind, Lucy. We all deserve to know what we're - "

"It's not like that, okay? I told you everything I know about the social and political conflicts of - "

"Fine, whatever you say," he broke off with a dismissive sneer, disappointment radiating off of him with a palpable heat. "Let's go."

"Wyatt - "

His eyes flashed cruelly. "You know you're a piss poor liar, Lucy. Why even bother when you know I'll see right through it?"

If he expected an answer to that question, he sure wasn't waiting around for her to provide one. Wyatt devoured all three steps up into the time machine in what felt like a millisecond. She followed him after a beat, keeping her eyes down as she told herself over and over again that earning his approval wasn't her number one priority.

With Wyatt pointedly ignoring her usual bumbling clumsiness with the damn seatbelt, that sentiment was failing to take root in her mind.

When she was buckled in at last, Rufus flipped a switch and the door to the outside world creaked shut. Lucy felt a wash of anxiety flooding over her as they were sealed off from Mason Industries, from 2018, from everything that represented their modern standards of safety and certainty. She held her breath for a moment and felt a crushing weight lock around her shoulders as she tried to remain calm.

Someday...someday Agent Christopher was going to push too far, act too fast, bend them beyond any reasonable breaking point. With the Lifeboat lurching through another rickety takeoff, Lucy couldn't suppress the dark thread in her mind that suggested someday might in fact be today.

They'd been picking their way along the rutted streets of Philadelphia for maybe five whole minutes before she broke. A man stopped on the sidewalk right in front of Rufus and doubled over with a long, rattling cough. Lucy froze immediately, her heartbeat thrashing up into her ears. This was a mistake, a terrible mistake, and she wasn't able to keep it to herself for a moment longer.

Wyatt's hand fell over her arm in a warm, familiar gesture...a gesture that bore no resemblance to the way he'd been treating her in 2018. "Lucy? What's up?"

She didn't bother with shielding the fear in her eyes from her teammates. She nodded towards the opening of a nearby alley and allowed Wyatt to steer her toward it. The three of them huddled together on the cobblestone street, shoulders wedged together on a tight circle as Lucy fought off another wave of crippling dread.

"It's...we're less than a week away from the first reported case of Yellow Fever. There's a massive outbreak this summer, and the epidemic pretty much ravages the whole city. The disease spreads from infected mosquitos, so contrary to the belief of the time, it's not actually contagious from person to person, but..."

"But someone could have it now and not know it yet, which means the mosquitos could already be a major issue."

Lucy nodded, immensely grateful that Wyatt had said the worst of it for her. "And maybe it's nothing. There's an endless list of reasons for a man to be coughing in 1793 - or in _any_ time period, really - but that won't keep me from panicking every time I see someone who looks sick or - or if I hear so much as a damn gnat buzzing around."

Rufus cast a wary glance up into the air, hand twitching at his side as if he was already poised to swat at anything that would dare to come his way.

But Wyatt's full attention was still on Lucy, his eyes soft and words pitched low. "Agent Christopher…she asked you not to tell us, didn't she?"

"Distractions like that are too dangerous," she repeated pathetically. "That's what she told me. She was pretty emphatic about keeping quiet, but I - well, we all know I'm a piss poor liar, right?"

Wyatt took her hand in his, obliterating any of his earlier criticism with a crinkly-eyed smirk. "Sorry about that. It's definitely better that we know, Lucy. You did the right thing by telling us."

She sucked in a big breath, berating herself for allowing his sudden praise and the touch of his hand to spin her head so far off-center in just about two seconds flat. It wasn't the first time he'd quickly flipped through a dizzying range of emotion with her, and while she knew their job held zero room for grudges, it was still a little disorienting to ride out the ebb and flow of how he reacted to her from one moment to the next.

Lucy worked her fingers away from his and tried to smile in return as she deliver another round of unfortunate news. "Well let me do the right thing again then and give you guys a second heads up - when we get home this time, there's no way we'll be allowed to do the usual debrief and then go on our merry way. Homeland Security would be insane to let us walk out of Mason without a very thorough examination, maybe even - "

"No, no," Rufus was adamantly shaking his head before she could get the word out. "Don't you dare say quarantine."

"Okay," she said with an inadequate shrug, "...maybe even a temporary period of mandatory isolation, then."

He turned his puzzled eyes to Wyatt. "Did she not just tell us that this thing wasn't contagious? Did I not just hear those exact words come out of her mouth?"

Wyatt tilted his head with a grim look. "I'm assuming the main concern is that it will only take one damn mosquito inadvertently traveling back with us to screw over North America as we know it."

"It might not be quite as dire as that," Lucy answered warily, "but yeah, you're on the right track. The general idea is that they'll need to call in CDC to be sure that there's no chance of releasing any undesirable guests onto an unsuspecting - and unprepared - San Francisco."

Rufus mopped his hand across the line of sweat gathering at his temples, clearly growing more agitated with each passing moment. "So what happens when we get back? They just build a bubble around the launch site and fence us in like zoo animals until some freak in a hazmat suit has time to drop by?"

"I don't know exactly, but they...they were already discussing practical options for isolating the threat when we left."

Wyatt gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, his voice still impressively steady in spite of the circumstances. "Hey, we're taking it one problem at a time, remember? We'll deal with the present when we get there, but until then, stopping Rittenhouse is our first priority."

"Yeah, yeah that's…" Rufus shook his head like he thought he could simply clear the rest of his worries away, but his face caved before he could finish that sentence. "Sorry, but one last question about this whole fever epidemic thing before we go save the world again. Time traveling mosquitos aside, I think the real elephant in the room here is what happens if one of us gets bitten by a greedy little bloodsucker? It's not...it's not really _that_ dangerous is it? Once we get home, I mean. There had to have been some serious medical advancements on all of this between now and 2018."

Lucy's eyes dipped down to regard the cobblestone beneath her feet. "There's, um...still no real cure or treatment for Yellow Fever. More than two hundred years have passed since the crisis in Philadelphia, but the best answer we have is to manage symptoms and limit complications."

" _Complications_? What kind of complications are - "

"That's enough," Wyatt interrupted Rufus' burgeoning tirade with a stern glare. "Look, there's no way Emma wants to be here any longer than what's absolutely necessary, right? So we find her, we stop her, we go home, and no one is contracting Yellow Fever while we're here. See a bug, kill a bug. End of story."

A skeptical glance flickered from Rufus to Lucy, but there was really no point in arguing. The job at hand hadn't changed and it did them no good to just stand around fearing the worst. So with Wyatt's somewhat mediocre pep talk ringing in their ears, they filed out of the alley like a uniform parade of brittle determination.

Lucy felt the just the barest brush of Wyatt's fingertips along the inside of her arm as they got swept up in the bustling motion of the crowded sidewalk. He was keeping her close, fulfilling his promise to protect her - or to never let her out of his sight again, as he'd more urgently put it on that first jump after her mother had dragged her to 1918 in the Mothership - but for some reason that effort was beginning to irritate her more than it comforted her.

She strode forward with her chin raised high and her heart thumping hollowly, feet carrying her faster until she was just far enough ahead of him to be out of his reach. The rest of the day followed in the same swirling pattern of stubborn annoyance. When it became evident that Wyatt wasn't taking the hint, she changed tactics and kept herself stationed on the other side of Rufus as they navigated the streets in search of Emma, shamelessly using him as a physical barrier to shield herself from the gravitational pull of Wyatt's touch.

That plan came with a short shelf life, though. The heat of the day had sweltered through the layers of her heavy skirts and lined her bodice in a thin sheen of sweat, which quickly cooled into a shiver-inducing clamminess as evening began to approach. Their only lead over the last several hours had brought them to a hole-in-the-wall tavern in a less than respectable section of town, but even here, it was plain to see that the establishment in question wouldn't be opening its doors to Rufus.

 _Dammit_. There went her barrier.

"We should split up," she suggested as soon as they'd ducked through the tavern's double doors. Wyatt's brow furrowed with instantaneous disagreement, so she pressed on, working overtime to keep her voice from wavering. "We'll get answers much faster this way, and it's not a big room. You'll be able to keep an eye on me the whole time."

He didn't seem overly appeased by that answer, but she'd made an airtight case and she knew it. Lucy gave him a nod and took off for the far corner of the room, grateful to throw herself into the task of moving through a flock of strangers, asking the same monotonous questions over and over again without needing to think or process or analyze. She was sure that she could once again sense the heat of Wyatt's gaze bristling along the back of her neck, but before long, she was able to shut that out too as she pressed on in the hunt to find a scrap of useful information on Emma's activities.

Her progress was brought to an abrupt halt when the gaze that had been bristling across her neck turned into a solid hand sliding unexpectedly over her skin. Lucy spun around with a startled little yelp, her surprise melting into sizzling frustration at Wyatt's nonchalant expression.

"What the hell, Wyatt? Are you - "

"Relax," he murmured with his face bending closer to hers. "There's a perv on the other end of the bar who hasn't stopped gawking at you since we first walked in."

His hand curled possessively around the base of her neck from behind, a renegade thumb stroking through the twist of her swept-up hair. He used his other arm to drape over the bar behind her so that she was pinned in place, surrounded on all sides, caught up in his arms, his eyes, just _him_.

And it made her angry. Inexplicably, uncontrollably, flat out angry.

"So what's the plan?" she asked in a tone that stung with untapped sarcasm. "Just pose like this for as long as it takes to make him realize I'm off limits? Play the part until he gets the message? Or just until it's not fun for you anymore?"

"What?" His blue eyes dimmed, bewilderment marring the lines of his face. "I'm just trying to - "

"To protect me? To make sure that nothing bad could ever happen again, even if it's just the harmless town drunk ogling me from across the room?"

"I thought you'd - "

Lucy arched up on her toes and planted her mouth firmly against his, muffling whatever line of bullshit he'd been planning to say, forcefully absorbing his words with a sucker punch of a kiss. He took a faltering half-step backward until he could brace himself accordingly, but there wasn't an ounce of hesitation in the way his lips swelled into her. His fingers worked up into her hair and teased along the back of her head, surely destroying the carefully arranged style that she'd selected to suit the time period...

Because God forbid she did something blatantly stupid like wearing her hair the wrong way or initiating a scandalously expressive kiss in public, which would obviously turn heads and raise serious red flags, potentially exposing them as the imposters they were.

 _Shit_.

Lucy fixed a stiff hand to the center of Wyatt's chest and pushed him away from her. His face was a jumble of contentious emotions, but he didn't utter a word as she inched her way out of his grasp.

"There... _that_ should do the trick. Thanks for your help."

She left him, speechless and unmoving, there at the bar. They had work to do, a secret society to take down, an entire world to save. She wasn't wasting another precious second of time on useless anger or childish mind games.

He was close at her heels as soon as they'd finished making the rounds, his hand circling her wrist before she could make it across the street to where they'd promised to meet Rufus.

"Wyatt, c'mon, we need to keep - "

"He can wait another damn minute," he said tightly as he tugged her into an alcove between two storefronts. "You and I need to clear the air first. I can't take any more of this weirdness."

"You - _you_ can't take...oh my God." She was nearly laughing with acidic disbelief, too stunned to formulate a better reply. "Unbelievable."

That reaction sparked raw anger in his narrowed eyes. "What the hell is going on with you? You've been avoiding me, barely speaking, acting like - "

"I just need some breathing room, okay?" Her outburst had come without much planning, but the words kept bubbling out of her and she wasn't going to start crushing them back down this time. She raised her hand and shook him off of her wrist with a pointed look. " _This_ , Wyatt. This is what's going on with me. I feel like I'm on an excruciatingly short leash every time we jump lately. I know you have some pretty valid reasons to be concerned about my safety, but your version of concern is suffocating."

Thunderclouds gathered ominously across his face, but he said nothing as he folded his arms rigidly across his chest.

Lucy steadied herself, softening her voice just in time to keep it from wobbling out of control. "I need you to back off a little while we're working. I can't keep going like this, can't do the job I was brought in to do, not with you constantly micromanaging my every move. I need space."

The venom in his expression was giving way to an unbearable bleakness. "But looking out for you is _my_ job, Lucy."

"I know that," she conceded with a twist of dejection. His job...jump after jump with his hands seeking her out, his arms wrapping around her, his body crowding close to hers...he was just doing his _job_.

"So how is this supposed to work? How am I supposed to keep you safe from a distance?"

She squared her shoulders and tightened the reins on her stupid, worthless feelings. "You have my full permission to do whatever it takes if there are bullets involved - or a bomb, a grenade, whatever… but other than that, just...err on the side of more space."

"More space," he echoed flatly. "Got it."

They crossed the street in a haze of dreadful silence, Lucy following a half step behind him as they trudged toward the appointed meeting spot. It felt like the air had been zapped from the sky above them, leaving an acute emptiness in its wake. That feeling was compounded when they found Rufus ambling toward them from the opposite direction, his mouth crumpled in exasperation. "She's already gone."

"What?" Lucy's head swam momentarily at the thought of another defeating blow. "The - "

"Mothership," he confirmed with a short nod. "A black man in Philly has always gotta look busy doing something in every decade. Just standing around on the corner was earning me no favors, so I went back to check on the time machine just for the hell of it...the computer says she left for home."

"Great," Wyatt snapped in a tone that conveyed anything other than greatness. "What are we waiting on then? Let's get out of here."

He stalked off down the street, setting a breakneck pace back to the Lifeboat. Rufus tilted his head to the side and sent Lucy an imploring look...an imploring look that she chose to steadfastly ignore.

An awkward hush enveloped them like a thick fog all the way to the time machine, then broke so severely that it almost gave Lucy whiplash.

Rufus saw it first. He was moving past Lucy to unlatch the Lifeboat, but stopped dead in his tracks and flapped his arm in a wild uproar of panic, unable to get a coherent word out as he flailed for her attention. She watched Rufus in a daze, her head lagging behind as she failed to grasp what the hell was wrong with him. It was Wyatt who came to the rescue, pushing past Rufus with a stony grimace and flicking a firm hand across the width of her shoulder, nearly dragging the fabric of her dress down over her arm with the ruthlessness of his sudden onslaught.

Lucy flinched away from him with a gasp, wide eyes jumping up to tangle with his icy blue resolve.

"Mosquito," he muttered darkly. "From what I'm told, that's about as good as a grenade in 1793."

She searched his impenetrable gaze for a long moment as her breath returned to her in uneven spurts. "Yeah...good call. Thanks."

His throat bobbed with a heavy swallow. He nodded once before turning away to hoist himself into the Lifeboat, once again leaving her behind with Rufus' mystified face inspecting her like she'd grown a second head.

She offered a shaky, "let's go home," and climbed in after Wyatt, being sure to keep her eyes averted once more as she buckled herself in for the journey through time.


	2. Chapter 2

_a/n: IT. IS. MARCH. THE MONTH WE HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! This will likely be the last fic I publish before S2 officially kicks off, and dang it, guys... I cannot believe we survived this awful long never-ending painful hiatus together :) I'm always so grateful for the support of everyone here, but in case I don't say it enough, THANK YOU. I am so excited to stop imagining random season 2 scenarios and start watching them for real instead :)_

 _without further ado, part 2!_

* * *

 _Mason Industries, 2 Hours Into Quarantine_

* * *

Wyatt watched the sharp line of Lucy's shoulders as she wriggled down further into the cot. He'd counted thirty-four minutes of tossing and turning, four long sighs, two pillow punches, and she still wasn't asleep. She was miserable. His whole body was dialed in, pulsing with the need to go to her and do something to help, but that wasn't an option because she wanted _space_.

Space. Space. Space. That damn word droned tediously in his head over and over and over again. Talk about irony, right? Lucy asked for space and she got _this_ instead - a sad little box of Plexiglas surrounding the even sadder little ball of steel they called the Lifeboat. Three people and one dumb time machine, all trapped indefinitely inside this stupid hellish bubble.

Staring at her back was doing nothing to curb his impulse to get up and walk over there. He flopped back in his cot and forced his mind into intentional blankness. White noise, static on a TV, nothing on nothing. He used to be a pro at this. Shutting down on command was necessary to his job, life-saving even. Rising to the rank of Master Sergeant doesn't happen without a colossal dose of mental discipline, which meant he had to be in charge of every thought, every reflex, every instinct.

So why could he still hear each intake and exhale of her breath with such painful clarity, almost as if it were being amplified through a sound system in his head?

He would count down from one hundred. That would do the trick. No, from five hundred. And he would do it by multiples of seven. In German. Wait, scratch that. German reminded him of Ian Fleming now, which of course also reminded him of Lucy, or more specifically, of another guy taking his shot at _flirting_ with Lucy. Which then of course brought him back around to today, to that asshole who just wouldn't stop staring at her in Philadelphia, to the cataclysmic explosion of her lips on his and the resulting upheaval of her rejection. Funny how that worked - _she_ had kissed _him_ and yet he was still the one who got dropped to the curb afterwards.

This line of thinking was about as far from white noise as he could possibly get.

Wyatt turned onto his side - the side that faced Rufus' cot, not Lucy's - and started at five hundred in Farsi, clicking backward by sevens with machine-like precision.

He was still wide awake when he zeroed out some time later, but the pattern of Lucy's breathing was deep and slow from behind him, thus removing the worst of the temptation. It would be much easier to grant her that goddamn space now that she was unconscious.

"Quit looking at me like that, dude. It's freaking me out."

The drowsy rumble of Rufus's voice caught him off guard, shaking him out of his disgruntled stupor with a start. "I wasn't looking at you. I was just zoned out."

Rufus nodded but appeared to be far from convinced. "Either way…? Still creepy as hell."

"Sorry," he mumbled with a roll of his eyes, sliding over to his back and fixing his creepy-as-hell gaze up at the ceiling instead.

"You do realize that you don't have to be on nightwatch alert, right? They may have dimmed the lights and sent most of the techs home, but we're not alone. Connor has this place crawling with guards these days, and that's on top of Agent Christopher's Men In Black people who never seem to clear out either. Our only enemy here is the mob of killer mosquitos that may or may not have hitched a ride with us to the future."

A phantom itch prickled over Wyatt's spine at the mention of those damn mosquitos, but he refused to acknowledge it. Mind over matter. He'd done a thorough search when he'd changed out of his attire from the 1700s; there was no bite, no real itch at all. "Just can't sleep, okay?"

"Forget mosquitos," Rufus muttered suggestively, "someone's been bitten by the _looove_ bug."

A new itch was prickling at Wyatt now, and it was the itch to lay Rufus out with a punch to the jaw. "How did you ever land a girlfriend with that lame-ass sense of humor? Jiya is so much cooler than you, man."

"Hey, I'm funny and you know it," he retorted snappily. Another few seconds passed before he was laughing quietly to himself, his tone much lighter when he spoke again. "She is cooler, though. Can't argue there."

Wyatt felt an unexpected twinge in his gut, one that was alarmingly similar to the destructive pull of jealousy. It was stupid to begrudge someone else's happiness, especially when that someone else was one of his best friends, but stupid was apparently his default mode today...which wasn't really helping things in the self-loathing department. And to top it all off, he was still experiencing a deep well of excess rage toward the dog-faced bastard back in 1793 who could've spared them this whole headache if he'd just kept his eyes to himself.

So that left him where, exactly? He'd mixed up one hell of a volatile cocktail - jealousy, stupidity, self-loathing, and rage - all circling back around to his feelings for one particular woman who now wanted nothing to do with him. It was well beyond terrifying to think of what had happened the last time he'd backed himself into a corner like this.

Oh, no. God no. He'd rather smother himself with his government-issued pillow than walk down _that_ road again.

"She kissed me," he blurted out without another thought. "Lucy, I mean. She kissed me."

"Really?! That's aweso- "

"No," Wyatt said in a hurry, wanting nothing to do with any level of congratulations. "She was...it was an angry kiss. She's pissed, dude. It was bad."

Rufus propped his head up on his hand, a ridiculous grin spreading over his face. "Are you sure? Angry isn't always bad. Like if you're talking about...well, you know. _Hot_ angry."

"Don't get me wrong, the kiss itself was...yeah, good. Better than good." He chuckled weakly and scrubbed a hand across his forehead. "But I'm not kidding when I say she's pissed off. She kissed me on an impulse - to prove a point, really, and I'm still not sure that she even knows why exactly - but the ending message was pretty clear. I'm supposed to leave her the hell alone."

"Hold up - she kissed you, then told you to get lost?"

"Yep. She wants space. Apparently I'm annoyingly clingy in the past."

Rufus sat up so quickly that his cot looked like it might flip over with him still in it. "She said you were clingy in the past? Like, _specifically_ in the past?"

Embarrassment burned like acid in his stomach, but Wyatt couldn't quit talking. That was also alarming. Information was suddenly spilling out of him like a free-flowing fire hydrant. "I don't think she ever used the word clingy per se, but yeah, that's pretty much how it went down. She asked me to cool it on the jumps. Give her some breathing room, quit hovering, et cetera. I'm basically in the same category as the frickin' mosquitos."

"Oh damn, Lucy." Rufus shook his head with a fleeting smile as his eyes leapt past Wyatt to regard her sleeping form with what seemed to be awe. " _Damn_."

"What?" Wyatt sat up too, swinging sideways to face Rufus head-on. "Why are you smiling like that? And please say something other than the word damn this time."

"I'd bet you ten boxes of Chocodiles that she's telling you the exact opposite of what she actually wants."

"Look, I was the first to say that there's something else going on here, but I can assure you that she really, _really_ meant the part about space."

Rufus shook his head intently. "Only because she's too proud to word it the other way."

"What other way?"

"That she wishes you'd be more clingy in the present."

"No, no way," Wyatt answered automatically, head bobbing from side to side. "That doesn't make any sense, okay? If she thinks I'm being obnoxious and overbearing and suffocating - she actually used the word _suffocating_ , Rufus - then why the hell would she want me to turn that up by a few more notches when we're not on a jump?"

"You're misunderstanding the point...perhaps intentionally. Forget what she said about space for a minute. Why do you think you treat her differently at all? What's happening between a jump and our real lives that keeps you from just acting the same way in both places?"

"That's the thing, though," he said with a frustrated sigh. "I don't treat her differently. She's - "

Rufus scoffed loudly enough to startle him into silence. "You do, Wyatt. I'm pretty much the only person in the world who has an unbiased front row seat to the will-they-or-won't-they show, and I'm here to tell you that she's not wrong. You take a very...lets say, a very _hands-on_ approach every time we're dropped into history. Can't say that I really notice that same behavior translating into our normal timeline."

"But - "

"Nah, hold on. Case in point, okay - Jiya used to bug the crap out of me about the two of you, especially after we came back from the 80s. She was just so sure that you felt something special for Lucy, and she had this crazy theory that - well, nevermind." He took a deep breath, eyebrows arched high as he stared Wyatt down. "Long story short, after the last time we all went out together, she told me she's given up on you two entirely. Went as far as trying to rack her brain for single guys she might know who would be into Lucy. I tried to tell her that I was sure it wasn't a total lost cause with you guys, but she wasn't buying it for another second. If she said it once she said it twenty times - Lucy's too great to be alone, so if Wyatt isn't ready to see it, then someone else will."

That was one too many hits in a row. He didn't like being told that he was wrong. He wasn't thrilled that his love life - or lack thereof - was playing out like some damn soap opera for everyone else to discuss behind his back. He _definitely_ didn't want to hear that his actions of late were truly as inconsistent as Lucy had so loudly indicated while twilight fell over Philadelphia. It also didn't feel so great to know that he'd apparently been radiating a high enough frequency of douchey obliviousness to convince Jiya that he had no romantic interest in Lucy at all, but that sinking feeling still didn't even begin to touch the resulting drop in his stomach that came with the idea of Lucy dating someone else.

He'd been irrationally angry when Ian Fleming had shown too much interest in her. He'd thought Lucy was being frickin' delusional when she'd decided that her so-called relationship with the hotshot doctor-fiance deserved a real shot. Today's incident had unsettled something inside of him that went far beyond a general concern for her safety. Her kiss inside of that tavern had sparked blinding frissons of warmth and excitement, the effect of which had very nearly knocked him on his ass.

There wasn't any point in pretending to question what all of that meant. He'd have to be an idiot to not comprehend what it added up to, but he was failing to understand why he'd ever let things get so fouled up in the first place. Why hadn't he just acted on these feelings before it could get this complicated?

Rufus misinterpreted his static silence and raised his hands in a show of surrender. "Don't shoot the messenger, okay? I wasn't trying to make you mad, I just - "

"I'm not mad," Wyatt cut in with a sigh. "I don't have any plans to shoot you either. I...I need time to think, that's all."

"Okay, just...try not to think your way out of being happy, alright? Both of you could use some damn happiness for once."

Happiness. That word turned sour as Wyatt tried to swallow it down. There was no doubt that Lucy made him happy, but he knew from experience that even the brightest, purest happiness wasn't guaranteed to last. Happiness couldn't patch every hole, wasn't able to bridge every gap, didn't have the power to mend whatever it was that seemed to be permanently broken inside of him. His idea of happiness had failed Jessica, and the worst thing he could ever do would be to offer that same happiness to Lucy just to ultimately watch it fail her too.

* * *

Lucy sat up quickly, head and heart pounding in tandem as her eyes fought to focus on her surroundings. It was dark beyond the borders of their temporary prison, nothing but long shadows and glowing screensavers. The uncharacteristic silence of Mason's warehouse felt oppressively eerie...almost as if it was hiding some unknown evil that was bound to spring out at her as soon as she let her guard down.

"Hey...you okay?"

Her bleary gaze latched onto Wyatt. He was sitting nearby with his back to the wall, watching her with a look that was unreasonably alert and attentive for how late it must have been.

"Just...nightmares," she answered with a spiritless shrug. "Same old, same old."

He frowned and leaned forward, hands tensed up over his knees. "The car accident?"

A chaotic blur of images flashed across her mind, stealing her breath all over again as she ran through the disordered slideshow of memories. "Yeah, among other things. I...I've been having some weird dreams since - well, since 1918."

 _Since my own mother tried to brainwash me into joining Rittenhouse_. They both knew that's what she'd really meant, but it still tended to get stuck somewhere inside of her whenever she tried to put it into words.

Wyatt nodded, and was it just her imagination, or were his knuckles actually turning white with how hard he was clenching his fingers together? She glanced away from him and traced a finger over the woven pattern of her blanket. "And as if the regular dream lineup isn't fun enough, tonight's special feature included the three of us getting attacked by a swarm of deadly mosquitos. Exciting stuff."

"Lucy…"

He sounded sad, sadder than anything she wanted to deal with at the moment, so she forged ahead with a question of her own.

"Why are you still up?" She squinted down at him, confusion whirling through her head at the reality of what was in front of her. "And better yet, why are you on the floor..? These cots may suck, but they're better than sitting on the ground all night."

His mouth hiked up in a dismal imitation of a smile. "Trust me, those cots can feel like they belong in a five-star hotel if you've gone without a proper bed for long enough."

A blast of sympathy surged through her at that rare mention of his past assignments, but she wasn't allowing him to distract her from the point. "Okay, so you don't mind sleeping on a slab of concrete, which is all the more reason for me to ask again - why are you sitting on the floor?"

"Just...couldn't sleep."

She inhaled slowly and held onto that breath for as long as she could, her faltering heartbeat picking up steam without her permission. "I...I'm sorry if I was too harsh earlier. I - "

"Don't," he flung back with a tortured look, "...don't you dare say you're sorry. You have nothing to apologize for, Lucy. I needed to hear it."

"I made a scene, though. Between that and the stupid kiss, it's a wonder they didn't toss us out of there before we got a chance to accomplish anything. I might as well have gone in with a bullhorn and made a public announcement that we weren't one of them."

His eyes shone with a piercingly unidentifiable emotion. "So the kiss was stupid, huh?"

She clutched her blanket between restless fingers and held on tightly. "It wasn't proper to kiss in public back then. Especially not when a woman initiates it, and definitely not a kiss like...well, like that one."

"That's a shame," he said with a slumped shrug, his teasing smirk looking so fragile and lifeless that she barely recognized it as his own. "Best thing that's happened to me all day, maybe even all week. Those poor chumps don't know what they're missing."

The dormant pulse of her anger flared in symphony with a competing rush of warmth. This was hardly the time to let herself get flattered by his maddeningly fickle charm. "Why is it so easy for you to do that? To say _that_ but not mean it? Because you can't possibly mean it, right? It's all just a joke to you, the kiss, the - "

"None of this is a joke to me," he cut in with all the gusto of a beaten down stray, "I did mean it."

"Really?" Her first instinct told her to relent while she still could, to run before they could inflict further damage on each other, but there was nowhere to go, no escape at all. They were as caged in as the feelings that warred inside of her. "I thought you were just doing your job, Wyatt. Nothing more, nothing less."

"If my job was to fall in love with my teammate and then make a total ass of myself by hurting her feelings and pushing her away, then yeah, I'm getting one hell of a performance review on this one."

Tears burned in her eyes as his words battered against her heart. "You...did you just say - "

"I love you, but I…" he trailed off, glancing down at his hands and shaking his head.

"But what?" she eked out with baited breath.

"I...I don't think I trust myself with you. I know what I want, what I feel, but...but it's easier to ignore it for your sake. I know it's a shitty thing to do, okay?" The blue in his eyes got brighter, more intense, shinier. "To selfishly keep you close when I have an excuse and can get away with it, but not so close that I can screw it all to hell..? I'm - "

"Wyatt, that's - "

"I know, alright? I know that it's not fair to cut you out of - "

"To cut me out of a decision that I damn well have every right to make myself?" She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. "You've sure got that right."

"I wasn't doing it on purpose," he answered softly. "It was never a conscious choice, Lucy. I'm not trying to justify it, but I - I'm not good at this. Deep down, I just don't trust myself to get it right this time."

She shoved the flap of her sleeping bag aside and swung her legs out over the end of the cot. "Okay, that's twice now. I'm not letting you say it a third time."

"What - ?"

Lucy drew her blanket around her shoulders and chewed right through the distance between them, kneeling so close that their legs were pressed together as she dropped down to face him. "You might not trust yourself, but I trust you. That should count for something, shouldn't it? I trust you even when you're being stubborn and unreasonable and I am absolutely _infuriated_ with you - "

"Like today?" he asked with a stark smile.

"Like today," she chuckled wryly, her eyes misting again at the look of agony still lingering in his gaze. "You've been driving me crazy, Wyatt. I was being serious when I said I can't keep going like this. Either you work past it and let me in, or..."

Her throat began to close up at the possibility of what she hadn't been able to say. What could be worse than getting this close, hearing him say he loved her, just to have it fall apart anyway?

"Or I give you more space?" he filled in with a thick rasp muddying his words.

She nodded, closing her eyes against the oncoming tears that were racing for release.

"She died because of me, Lucy. We fought, I lost my temper, and I abandoned her. I left Jessica alone in the middle of nowhere and never saw her again."

"So that's it, then?" she whispered through a shattering rupture of pain that she felt bone-deep. "We just go on and pretend this conversation never happ- "

" _No_ ," he broke in forcefully, punctuating those two letters with a hand grasping desperately at her leg. "That's not - I just needed you to know, Lucy...I need you to know exactly what happened with Jess before you go on thinking you can trust me with this, okay? I've never said it all out loud to you before, and it wouldn't be fair to keep it from you now."

Relief launched through her with a dizzying seesaw effect. "But Wyatt...I already knew. I know all of that. You've told me more than you think, and you've also been known to storm away from a still-open laptop right after we got back from a jump..."

His head bobbed slowly like her words were filtering through to him in a dense, gradual fog.

"I was also the one who looked her up when you came back from '83, and...and your face when I told you it didn't work..." Lucy stole a shuddering breath at the rawness of that memory, "...not only do I know the story of what happened, but I also know how heartbroken you were to find that you couldn't fix it, not even with a time machine. None of that could make me love you less. If anything, it makes me love you more."

She watched as his eyes fell closed, the harsh lines of his suffering fading away one by one. When he blinked back to life several moments later, there was a brilliant clarity in his vast blue gaze, his voice rough but certain as he cracked his lips open. "Do you think we could maybe disregard that whole 'space' thing for a minute? Because the woman I love just indirectly admitted that she loves me too and I'd like to do something about that."

Her hand slid over top of his, reminding him that he was still holding onto her thigh in an uncompromising grip. "I think that exception has already been granted."

Wyatt angled closer, eyes drifting down over her face with a heady grin. "Good, because my backup plan of claiming that there was a mosquito on your mouth - and that I needed to get if off with _my_ mouth - was probably a little implausible."

"Yeah, just a little," she hummed back with as much of a teasing smile as she could summon through her tears. "You're supposed to be the better liar of the two of us, remember? How exactly did you word that again?"

His lips fluttered over hers, noses bumping together, his breath warming her face. "Do me a favor and please forget every stupid thing I've said today." His kiss landed in full force then, illuminating her from the inside out. "Or everyday," he murmured against her mouth before catching her in another potent kiss, "since we first met…"

The truth of the matter was that her mind was rapidly slipping away from her anyhow, making it insanely easy to forget just about everything other than the blaze of attraction that crackled between them. His kisses grew bolder, longer, heavier. The hand that cupped her thigh skimmed higher until his fingers were sinking against her hip. Lucy nudged closer, wriggling sideways to better accommodate the endless chain of kisses, to drag out each surreal exchange of lips and tongues and hands...

The spell was fractured with the creak of Rufus shifting in his cot, muttering something unintelligible, then settling back down with a sleepy sigh.

"Close call," Wyatt whispered gruffly into her cheek, a hint of a smirk crinkling against her.

"Yeah, we should probably…" she trailed off at the feel of his stubble scraping over her neck, then bit her lip to withhold a whimper as his mouth began to nip lower.

"Hmm?"

That noise coursed through her skin like a frazzling electric current.

"Wyatt...we should…"

"Hold on," he murmured from the intersection of her neck and shoulder, "I need to make sure that mosquito didn't get you earlier."

Lucy arched against his mouth with an involuntary sigh and let her nails rake up into his hair. "Don't you dare a leave a mark...they'll never let me out of here if they see - "

His teeth grazed over her with a bite so light and playful that it couldn't possibly do any real damage, but it was more than enough to promptly shut her up. And oh God, she wanted him to do it again. And again. Maybe forever.

"Looks safe," he reported with what sounded like a muffled grin. "Although I can't blame the damn thing for trying. You taste awfully sweet, ma'am."

She laughed despite the absurdity of it all, sliding her hands over his shoulders to prod him away from her. "Careful, you're bordering on corny now."

His eyes gleamed mischievously in the low light. "Funny you should say that. Rufus made a terrible joke about being bitten and I called him on it...but now I'm apparently just as bad as him, dammit."

"He did? When did that happen?"

"While you were asleep." The amusement waned slowly from his expression, leaving something far more contemplative in its place. "He gave me a much-needed reality check, and also suggested that maybe you were less annoyed about the way I act in the past and more annoyed about the way I _wasn't_ acting in the present."

"Both could use a little work," she responded with a gentle smile, "but he was definitely in the right ballpark with that guess."

"Thank God. Sometimes I need a good kick in the ass, you know."

"Oh, I definitely know," she chuckled softly.

She rearranged herself against him, finding a home for her head on his shoulder and leaning her side into the solid length of his. His arm folded her closer, his cheek descending over the top of her head until they were tucked together like perfectly fitted puzzle pieces. "I really am sorry, Lucy. I'm ready for this. I'm so damn sure of it, of us, of you...but that doesn't mean I won't still get in my own way if I'm not careful."

Now that she'd experienced _this_ \- the kissing, the cuddling, the promise of love and so much more - there was no way she'd let him get away with anything less. She tried to say as much, but the heaviness of lost sleep was catching up to her, and it was easier to simply run a reassuring hand across his opposite shoulder, hopefully reminding him that she was there, she understood, and she was just as ready - and as sure - as he was.

Wyatt shifted away from her some time later, whispering a "be right back" into her hair, then left her to watch him with heavy-lidded eyes as he yanked the pillows and sleeping bags from both of their cots. He flicked one bag open wide across the floor, then unzipped the second one and laid it flat too. His hands appeared before her, effortlessly pulling her up to her feet and guiding her across the floor until he was pulling her back down again.

"There," he said as his arm circled her waist and eased her against him. "Much better."

He pulled the extra sleeping bag up over them and held her snugly inside of their warm little cocoon. Lucy skipped over her pillow and planted her head against his chest instead, relishing in the consistent _thump thump thump_ of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

"Much better," she agreed with a contented sigh.

"Sweeter dreams this time, okay?"

She nodded off against him within seconds, finding that all of the restlessness from before had completely evaporated as sleep stole over her again.

* * *

Rufus dragged the corner of his blanket up over his head with a grumble of protest, but the persistent tapping noise didn't go away. It was the sound of another grumble - one was that just as deep and irritable as his own - that caught his attention and forced him to peel his eyelids open, because _that_ grumble did not belong in his usual sleeping space.

His murky outlook on all things morning-related was immediately torn away as he caught sight of his teammates snuggled up together on the floor.

Oh...oh no way. Quarantine was suddenly feeling a hell of a lot more like Christmas morning.

"Mornin', love bugs," he singsonged from above them. "Sleep well?"

"Don't say bugs, Rufus," Lucy grunted with her face still buried against Wyatt's shoulder. "Not in here. Too soon. Not funny."

The tapping picked up speed against the plexiglass wall, reminding him that it was something other than Wyatt's grumbling that had roused him from a stone cold sleep. He glanced up to find Agent Christopher with a fist raised to knock again, as well as several sets of unfamiliar eyes gawking at them like the poor captive animals that they were. "Uh, guys? Looks like the cavalry has arrived."

That got Lucy up and moving with unprecedented haste. She flung herself off of Wyatt with a wild darting look, blinking owlishly and smoothing her hair down with a few frantic pulls.

Wyatt, on the other hand, was in no hurry to do anything but stare up at her with a ridiculously mushy smile. "Well what are they waiting for? I'm ready to lose the audience."

Rufus grimaced at the blatant overtone of vulgarity in Wyatt's voice. It was far more entertaining when he got to be the one who delivered uncomfortable comments. All the fun was zapped out of it now that Wyatt was willing to fire them back in reply.

The next several hours passed as miserably as Rufus had anticipated. They were essentially corralled into one corner of the holding pen until the biohazard freaks could agree upon the best way to navigate the risks and obstacles, and then the decontamination of their cell commenced with enough painfully meticulous precision to drive all three of them bonkers.

Through it all - the initial scouring search for infected insects, the tedious medical examinations that followed, and even the long overdue debrief with Agent Christopher about their trip to Philadelphia - Rufus couldn't help but notice that Wyatt's 'hands-on approach' had returned with a brazen vengeance. He was glued to Lucy, his touch never quite leaving her as he alternated between holding her hand, cupping her leg, and stroking a roaming line along her back, all of it playing just barely to the safe side of casual.

The concept of casual went pretty far out the window, however, when they were finally given full clearance to leave the premises.

They'd left before him, quickly making their way to the employee exit with fingers linked together, and Rufus felt a genuine rush of satisfaction as he watched them go. It had been a long time coming, and he hadn't been kidding about both of them deserving some happiness in their lives. But none of that - _none_. _of_. _that_. - meant he wanted to walk out into the sunny parking lot and unwittingly stumble across a view of Wyatt bending Lucy backwards over the front bench seat of his truck, mouth-to-freaking-mouth like there was an emergency resuscitation taking place.

Well they sure got over that space issue pretty damn quickly.

The door to Mason swished open from behind him, and Rufus felt rather than saw - since his eyes were too busy falling out of his head - Jiya's stunned standstill at his side.

"Did I - was that Lucy and Wyatt?"

"Yep," he answered blankly.

"They - wow. Horizontal in a parking lot? Didn't think they had that in them…"

A horrifying litany of innuendos vaulted across the forefront of his brain, none of which he could possibly bring himself to speak aloud, not even as a joke. "Let's get out of here. I didn't live through that stupid quarantine just to get stuck out here on the damn sidewalk."

"Yeah," Jiya said without moving an inch, still gaping at the empty space where Wyatt and Lucy's heads used to be. "They might not have Yellow Fever, but they sure did catch _something_ , didn't they?"

Rufus scoffed his agreement and forcibly pulled her away, infinitely grateful for the small favors - his car was parked in the exact opposite direction of Wyatt's truck.

* * *

 _the end! thanks again, and please review if you feel so inclined :)_


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